Superstudio: Hybrid Mechanisms
This Superstudio takes on the challenge of Hybrid Mechanisms, an intensive workshop on drawing assembly that explores the intersection of representation, and speculative collage.
In this session, we push beyond conventional architectural drawing into a space where hybridised techniques generate new forms of spatial intelligence—where drawing itself becomes a mechanism of assembly.
The workshop investigates how components, fragments, and disparate elements can be systematically—or disruptively—assembled through drawing. We are working at the threshold between material articulation and spatial imagination, mapping out speculative architectures that blur the boundaries between machine, organism, and structure.
Through this process, students engage with composite visual languages, integrating digital modelling, algorithmic logic, hand drafting, collage, and coded notations to construct drawings that are not merely representations but active sites of construction and transformation.
Key questions guide the workshop:
How does assembly logic influence spatial organisation in the drawing?
Can a drawing function as a mechanism for design exploration, rather than a static representation?
How can hybrid drawing methods reveal new possibilities for architectural tectonics?
The ambition is to produce drawings that behave as assemblages, where architectural components interact, shift, and evolve within layered systems of information. Students are encouraged to disrupt traditional hierarchies of plan, section, and elevation, instead constructing mechanically intricate, materially ambiguous, and structurally adaptive drawings that suggest new spatial conditions and potential architectural futures.
Through this experimental lens, the Superstudio continues to expand its critical and speculative approach to architectural drawing, challenging the ways we construct, communicate, and conceptualize design.
